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CONCEPTION OF REALITY
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The later Greek thinkers like Democritus and others could not satisfy their impulse of curiosity in this fashion. They thought that the visible objects of the universe are many and independent of one another, and each such object can be divided further and further till we come to a point beyond which our division cannot go. Such units of material objects, which they call 'atoms' must be the ultimate physical principles of the universe. From these ‘atoms' all else (including minds ) have been derived. They are the only reals, self-sufficient, self-existent, and indivisible; and independent of the minds which originate from them. This type of Realism can be called 'Pluralistic Material Realism' or
Atomic Realism.' PRAGMATIC VIEW OF REALISM
Pragmatism means, in the broadest sense, the acceptance of the categories of life as fundamental. Perry remarks that it is the
bio-centric' philosophy. The Pragmatist means by life, not the imaginary or ideal life of any hypothetical being, not the 'eternal' life or the absolute' life but the ternporal, operative life of animals and men, the life of instinct and desire, of adaptation and environment, of civilization and progress. The whole 'experimentalist' tendency in English science and philosophy may be said to have anticipated the pragmatist theory that truth is achieved by the trying of hypotheses. This tendency of Pragmatic Realism is mainly directed against Absolutism.
It regards idea as an exercising force of the function of 'meaning.' To quote Perry, an idea is whatever exercises the function of ' meaning.' Any thing may be an idea, provided you mean with it; just as any thing may be a weapon, provided you do injury with it. An idea is what an idea does. In this sense ideas are modes of conceiving the given, a 'taking it to be this or that. It is a virtual access to an immediate experience of that which it means. By ideas, Pragmatism does not mean 'Platonic essences' but the modes of an individual's thinking. The Pragmatist conceives Reality in the terms of intellectual process and circumstances. CONCEPTION OF NEO-REALISM
Neo-Realism believes that the world is existent and is independent of mind. However, it does not appear exactly in the same form as the Dualistic Realism of Hamilton, who makes no
